The Explosive Child book review by Jess Gorman
In Dr Ross Greene’s best selling book, he outlines the Collaborative and Proactive Solutions method, a ground-breaking, research-based approach to understanding and parenting kids with challenging behaviours.
“As parents, we have often tried all the conventional and popular methods for dealing with challenging behaviours”
As parents, we have often tried all the conventional and popular methods for dealing with challenging behaviours – reward charts, times outs, consequences, even bribes, only to find these methods don’t fully solve the challenges, or aren’t sustainable. Instead, Dr Greene invites us to consider a new perspective when parenting our tricky kids – Kids do well when they can. And if they aren’t doing well, it’s due to a lack of crucial skills in the areas of flexibility, adaptability, frustration tolerance, perspective taking, and problem solving.
The book outlines what a problem-solving partnership with your child looks like, and provides a conceptual framework for understanding your child and working collaboratively with them to solve the problems that lead to frustrations and meltdowns. This method places you on the same team as your child, working together to solve a problem, rather than you against your child in a constant tug of war.
The book is an easy read, with lots of examples and anecdotes to keep the reader engaged and demonstrate the techniques. Your child doesn’t necessarily have to be as “explosive” as the examples of children provided in the book for the method to be applicable – though we would suggest you check out Dr Greene’s sibling text to this book, Raising Human Beings, if this fits your context better.
Recently, our team have been training in Collaborative and Proactive Solutions, and if you have any further enquiries or want to know more, please contact our admin team for more information.
About the Author of ‘The Explosive Child’
Ross W. Greene, Ph.D., is the originator of the Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) model described in this book, an approach he has researched extensively, along with colleagues throughout the world. Dr. Greene served on the faculty at Harvard Medical School for over 20 years, and is currently Founding Director of the non-profit Lives in the Balance and adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Tech. He consults extensively to families, schools, and therapeutic facilities and lectures widely internationally.
Jess Gorman and the kids & family team have developed a program called myfamily@masters.
What is the myfamily@masters program?
A treatment guide to services provided for children age 4-14, using Dr Ross Green’s Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS)
Targeted intervention for children with challenging behaviours tailored to whole of family needs
An intervention involving parents and caregivers to build literacy and capacity at home
A program of approximately 10-15 sessions
An intervention whilst waiting for a diagnosis or assessment results
An intervention to compliment a recent diagnosis
An intervention with data collected to benefit assessing better outcomes alongside existing research
An intervention with capacity to link to associated professionals
An intervention that has 4 key phases of treatment (including access to the myfamily@masters workbook; an online learning portal; fun as well as focussed activities.
Contact Jess for more information at admin@masterspsychology.com.au
Check out the Mother’s Day Blog >
